Houston may be notorious for tearing down the old to build the new, but our street names give us a little history, as well as a sense of personal whimsy and changing times.

So we have Travis, Austin, Lamar, Houston and Deaf Smith, named for Texas legends. MacGregor, Holcombe, Freeman and Fondren, named for local civic leaders.

Marks Hinton, author of Historic Houston Streets/The Stories Behind the Names, says there are about 50,000 streets in Harris County, and many more when you consider the metropolitan area.

Most are named by the developer, chosen for a melodic sound, he says. People would rather live on Pear Tree Lane than Inch Road, according to that theory.

"Most people wouldn't want to live on Stalin Street," Hinton says. "People are very particular about their street names."

Marlowe, Shakespeare, Chaucer and Longfellow evoke a literary bent, while Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Carnegie just make us seem smart.

The streets of one Pasadena neighborhood are named for Kentucky Derby winners, while developer and former mayor Bob Lanier named streets in one of his subdivisions American Beauty, Summer Snow, King's Ransom, Tropicana and Carrousel to commemorate his love of roses.

But when people hear an unusual name, one that sounds like it might have a little history behind it, they're curious.

Some even visit the Houston Public Library's Texas Room, where librarians now offer up Hinton's book, as well as files and, in some cases, old city memos to explain the process.

Developers typically name streets in new subdivisions, then submit their list to the city's Department of Planning & Development. The city checks to make sure the list doesn't contain names already in use — that would complicate things for mail delivery, among other problems — and that they follow a few rules. Another big one: Streets can't be named for living people, according to department spokeswoman Suzy Hartgrove.

At least, the full name can't be used.

"Suzy" would be fine. So would "Hartgrove." But no "Suzy Hartgrove Street" while Hartgrove is still with us.

Exceptions can be made for people of "national prominence," which explains the Nolan Ryan Expressway.

That rule doesn't apply to private streets inside the Texas Medical Center, where several street names recognize living people. The most recent was David Underwood Boulevard, named in 2006 for the chairman of the TMC board, according to medical center spokeswoman Suzanne Suarez.

Hinton says he's not sure why the subject resonates with people, other than the fact that we see these street names every day, often while idling in our cars.

(Marks Road, by the way, isn't named for Hinton or his forbears. Neither is Hinton Boulevard.)

Sometimes the mystery is more compelling than the truth.

Hinton says he's asked most often about Stella Link, a street off the South Loop.

"It reminds people of the movie Stella Dallas, I think," he says, "and people wonder who she is."

But Stella Link wasn't a person. The road ran parallel to a railroad line that connected the city of Bellaire with the Stella, Texas, station for the International-Great Northern and the Texas & New Orleans Railroads.

It was, literally, the link to Stella.

Hinton spent six years researching street names before publishing his book in 2006, prodded by a lifelong love of history and the free time he gained after retiring from the investment business.

He started in the library's Texas Room, only to discover there wasn't much information available.

"They literally pulled out this manila folder," he says.

He began to pore through more detailed information — city memos, obituaries and books, then branched out into "field research."

That started with talking to neighborhood leaders, who often referred him to longtime residents. He combed cemeteries in search of information — his next book will look at who's buried in Houston's cemeteries — and began driving around.

Hundreds of street names are detailed in his book, which is available at several local bookstores as well as at Hinton's Web site, www.archivaltexas.com. The Web site also includes information on street names Hinton learned about after the book was published.

Texmatti Drive in Katy is named after Texmati rice, a blend of Indian basmati and Texas long grain rice.

Local entrepreneurs are immortalized, including Michael Louis Westheimer, a German immigrant whose name is now used for a major east-west thoroughfare; neighborhoods around the Johnson Space Center reflect its mission with streets named Saturn, Gemini, Jupiter and Mercury.

Other names are private jokes: Hartgrove says legend has it that Lemac Drive just south of the South Loop is "Camel" spelled backward, named by someone for his favorite brand of cigarette.

And Rue St. Cyr in Sharpstown was apparently named for Lili St. Cyr, according to Hinton. St. Cyr, a legendary California stripper in the 1940s and '50s, was noted for emerging from a bubble bath nude except for strategically placed bubbles.